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Since the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and its effectiveness in the international field, several reforms have been made in order to conform the Congolese legal order to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The principle of cooperation between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the DRC has been experienced throw the cases on the Congolese situation pending upon the ICC. Also the complementarity principle became a reality. The ICC and Congolese military tribunals are both competent to deal with cases concerning the repression of international crimes. The latest have recently produced a huge number of cases that can be considered as the contribution made by the Congolese jurisprudence to the development of the international criminal law and the humanitarian international law. The purpose of this contribution is to analyze the aftermath of the coming into force of the International Criminal Court in the Congolese legal order by scrutinizing both weakness and success of the entire process.

Using the notion of acculturation, the implications of which are examined here in the light of the tylorian concept of culture, the author presents data illustrating the early contacts between Whites and the Ayorés of the Paraguayan Chaco from a Native perspective. To escape the almost mystic vision of “first contact”, the data chosen (life and war stories, texts of shamanistic visions collected in the field, and archival images) cover a period extending from the capture of an Ayoré boy of 12 (José Ikebi) by Paraguayans in 1953 to the arrival of the last Ayorés to “White civilization” a few years ago. Analysis of these data leads the author to a radical critique of the notion of acculturation, and especially Herskovitz’s position, and to a questioning not only of the existence of a different perspective on the reality of the Conquest but also of the status of those sources that represent the Conquest in historical and anthropological approaches.

This essay discusses the construction of a post-traumatic subjectivity in Tornatore’s La sconosciuta. Following a sex-trafficking survivor’s struggle against ghosts of the past as well as present forms of offences and vulnerabilities, the narrative unfolds through flashbacks and dramatizations of the victim’s precariousness as an Eastern European, irregular, immigrant woman. The nexus that emerges between traumatization and stigmatization circles around the woman’s body and the contrast it personifies between her perceived cultural inferiority and physical desirability. Just as this character exposes the prejudice and discriminatory behaviour that perpetuate exclusion of ethnic minorities as well as systems and structures of injustice and exploitation, the ambivalences she embodies as a diligent and caring but also deceptive and violent nanny questions the victim/criminal paradigm typically present in public discourses concerning irregular immigrants and trafficking victims, especially. The critique of essentialist perceptions and practices merges with a focus on retraumatizing re-experiences that are triggered by sensory impressions and distressful interactions. Critical perspectives on complex trauma will illuminate possible correlations between the acute and protracted abuse represented and the susceptibility the character shows toward revictimization as well as the self-destructive and partly violent tendencies she exhibits. When she eventually starts to articulate past events and acquires a gradual control over her memories, it is largely for the presence of listeners who communicate empathy and detachment. Finally, it is this critical attitude that spectators are encouraged to assume to consider interconnections between essentialist exclusion, acute and protracted exploitation, and structures and systems of global injustice.

Keywords: Sex-trafficking, Eastern-European women, essentialist othering, acute abuse, complex trauma, relational reconstruction of self, global justice

Syrians took to the streets in March 2011 calling for political, economic and social reforms. This was the beginning of the Arab Spring in Syria. In a few months, popular discontent spread throughout the country, and thousands of hundreds of people demanded a regime change. The State responded with the brute force of its police, security forces and army to crush the uprising. The Syrian President Bashar al-Asad decided to use the criminal justice system to serve his politics of repression. This research note aims to describe the role of public prosecutors and judges of the State in the judicial repression of the social protest movement of 2011. It focuses on the participation of women as members of the judiciary who, because of their experience in the criminal justice system, play a major role in the implementation of the State's criminal justice policies. Since the Revolution of 2011, women prosecutors and judges have been promoted to positions of power in the judiciary. How have they used this newly acquired power ? To promote justice or to serve the state policy of political repression ? These are the questions at the heart of this case study of women and judicial power in Syria.

Keywords: Cardinal, Syrie, magistrature, femmes, Printemps arabe, tribunal antiterroriste, Cardinal, Syria, Judiciary, Women, Arab Spring, Counter-terrorism Court, Cardinal, Siria, poder judicial, mujeres, Primavera árabe, tribunal antiterrorista

AbstractIn the brief fifteen-year period between the outbreak of World War I and the onset of the Depression a significant number of agricultural labourers stood accused in western Canadian criminal courts for raping, indecently assaulting, or seducing farm women or their daughters. These “hired hand” cases provide an opportunity to explore how considerations of class, ethnicity, and gender shaped both the nature of sexual conflict and violence during the settlement period and the meanings that western Canadians attached to it. Cases of gender and class conflict between farm hands and farm women belied Utopian visions of the West that depicted the region as a land that was free of the class and gender restraints that typified the Old World. Sex crime prosecutions served as a means for the criminal courts and farm families to identify and punish men and women, who, for complex reasons, did not share the values or live up to the ideals of the emerging capitalistic society.